An extra 200 car parks will soon be available for patients and visitors at Tauranga Hospital as management look to ease ongoing issues with the hospital's lack of available parking.

Figures released to SunLive under the Official Information Act show there are currently 1047 car parks at the hospital with 379 allocated to staff.

An aerial shot of Tauranga Hospital and its parking. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

There are 2172 staff working at hospital, more than double the number of car parks.

On top of this the hospital averages more than 500 patients and visitors daily.

About 191,000 people came through its doors as patients in 2013/14 – at 523 a day. In 2012/13 this number was 187,000 – at 512 a day.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board chief executive Phil Cammish says the hospital has committed to leasing an additional 200 car parks off campus to be used by DHB staff.

This will free up 200 of the car parks in the Clarke Street car park currently allocated to staff. They will instead be exclusively for patients and visitors from November 2014.

The total staff count is a headcount, not a full-time equivalent, and includes all staff required to deliver a 24/7, 365 day a year service, including many part time staff, says Phil.

The number excludes staff located in offsite buildings.

Among the public keen to see extra parking is Tauranga mother Katherine Bremmer, who believes people should be cared for and not forced to walk lengthy distances from their car to the hospital doors.

Katherine endured a 'terrible first experience” trying to find a park at the hospital.

Taking her baby in for a specialist appointment, Katherine found herself driving around both the top and bottom carparks for quite some time, in the pouring rain, all the time getting more and more stressed about being late.

'I ended up having to park right down the end of 17th Ave and push my baby in the pram all the way uphill to get to the lift that takes forever to work.

'The baby was crying, I was soaked through, incredibly stressed and so late. These days I have even more children to wrangle so hence leaving loads of time.”

She now adds 30 minutes to any trip to the hospital to allow parking time, but still finds it extremely difficult to secure a valuable car park spot.

'The nature of a hospital carpark is that there are people who are vulnerable, sick and have poor mobility- including the very old and the very young.”

Phil says the public parking availability, compared to the number of staff and public use, is based on Tauranga City Council's operative district scheme.

The scheme requires the Bay of Plenty District Health Board to provide 2.4 car parks per 100m2 of building floor.

In the last four years an extra 150 car parks have been made available at the Clarke Street side of the campus, adjacent to the DHB building, and also at the front of the campus in efforts to make parking more readily available.

The parks are free of charge.

The number of time-limited five minute and 10 minute parks immediately adjacent to the main entrance has also been increased.

Phil says there are both concierge and security staff available to monitor the time limit on the parks by the main entrance and staff are not allowed to park on the top carpark and are towed if identified.

Patients and their families are always welcome to ask for assistance at main reception to help move patients into or out of vehicles or to use a wheelchair to get a patient to a car parked too far away for them to walk to.